Who’s buying up cheap houses in Detroit? 10 leaders at tax auction

This home at 1532 Atkinson is among thousands of houses that sold for under $1,000.

Dozens of investors worldwide gobbled up cheap houses and buildings in Detroit during the Wayne County auction for tax-delinquent properties this fall.

By the auction’s close late last month, investors scooped up two-thirds of the roughly 15,000 available properties, many of which sold for the minimum $500 bid.

Here are the top purchasers of Detroit priorities, according to a ranking compiled by Why Don’t We Own This?, an incredibly useful database with information on every property in Detroit. Click on the name below to learn more about the properties.

A Michigan real estate agent, Briggs paid between $500 and $18,000 for houses all over Detroit. Of the 428 properties, more than 400 cost just $500. Briggs typically resells each house for $5,000 to $8,000, according to real estate listings. In 2012, Briggs bought 50 properties for $33,160.

An investor of distressed properties nationwide, Ee Meng Peh paid between $500 and $1,600 for houses on the west and east sides. He does business using a variety of corporations, which include Michigan Assets LLC.

Representative of Nevada-based Direct Properties LLC., which buys homes in bulk and often sells them without ever seeing them. “We can’t rehab all of them!” the company’s website reads. “There’re so many of them that it’s impossible for us to rehab each and every one of the hundreds of properties that we have.” Houses ranged from $500 to $3,500.

Pakhchanian is managing director of Detroit Progress LLC, a real estate venture that sells distressed homes, generally for between $2,000 and $7,000. Pakhchanian spent between $500 and $4,100 on each home in the auction.